06 May 2013

When should you kill a prophet?

As I mentioned in my previous post, a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door on Saturday, and, after listening to their chosen verse, I asked them to read Deuteronomy 13:6-10. The young man who read the passage had apparently never read it before, so he decided to read the previous verses in the chapter to get some context.

(Context is the believer's first line of defense when defending the indefensible in the Bible.  It rarely works; context nearly always makes it worse.)

Here are the first five verses in Deuteronomy 13 from the Watchtower's New World Translation. (Does anyone know why the JW's use allcaps for "you" or "your" in this passage?)
In case a prophet or a dreamer of a dream arises in your midst and does give you a sign or a portent, and the sign or the portent does come true of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us walk after other gods, whom you have not known, and let us serve them,’ you must not listen to the words of that prophet or to the dreamer of that dream, because Jehovah ​YOUR​ God is testing ​YOU​ to know whether ​YOU​ are loving Jehovah ​YOUR​ God with all ​YOUR​ heart and all ​YOUR​ soul. ... And that prophet or that dreamer of the dream should be put to death, because he has spoken of revolt against Jehovah ​YOUR​ God ... and you must clear out what is evil from your midst.
When he got to the part that said "and the sign or the portent does come true" I asked him to repeat it, since I expected the verse to say "and the sign or the portent does not come true." But no, he read the verse correctly. God commands us to kill prophets that correctly prophesy future events! He is testing us by sending true prophets from false religions. Or something like that.

Which seemed strange to me, strange even for the Bible.

So I checked to see what the Bible says about false prophets. It's covered a few chapters later in Deuteronomy.
However, the prophet who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die. And in case you should say in your heart: “How shall we know the word that Jehovah has not spoken?” when the prophet speaks in the name of Jehovah and the word does not occur or come true, that is the word that Jehovah did not speak. With presumptuousness the prophet spoke it. You must not get frightened at him. Deuteronomy 18:20-22 (NWT)
Which means you must kill prophets that falsely predict future events. (Like the Jehovah's Witnesses)

So to sum up.

God commands us to kill prophets who either correctly predict the future in the name of a false god or who incorrectly predict the future in the name of a true god.

I guess we can let live false prophets of false gods and true prophets of true gods. Unless someone knows of a scripture that says otherwise, that is.

This prophet-killing business can get so confusing sometimes. How do believers keep it all straight?

8 comments:

Stephen said...

Google is your friend, Steve!
(Not YOUR friend. ^_^ )

Surprisingly, the answer I found makes some sense:

In the NWT, words in all caps indicate the plural. Hebrew and Greek have a plural form of 'you,' but English doesn't.

In the print edition of the NWT, the words in all caps are in a smaller font size, so YOU doesn't jump out of the surrounding text like it does on Y!A. For that reason, when quoting from the NWT, I personally change all YOU's to you's. Because the point is to indicate pluralism, not to emphasize. Usually the context indicates pluralism.


Source:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100529052906AAoqXhl
Steve Weeks

kengullette said...

What a great blog! I don't comment much but I read it!

drfwerner said...

Hi,

you asked:
"This prophet-killing business can get so confusing sometimes. How do believers keep it all straight?"
But that's easy. Kill them all and let god sort them out.

Regards

The Hot Dog Professor said...

Recently a JW came to my door. I asked a few questions that caused him to run and hide beneath the blanket of "you must have faith".

I asked, where in life is faith necessary except religion and beliefs that are void any and all evidences?

He said, "You have faith that your wife will come home tonight."

No sir! I have a reasonable expectation based on the fact that every time she leaves she has returned. This expectation is founded on facts and requires no faith.

kevroy33 said...

@the hot dog professor Technically reason requires faith (as does induction, as in "faith that your wife will come home tonight"). Hume taught this-- the only reason we believe that induction will work is because it's worked in the past. Also, the premises of any argument are derived from the conclusions of previous arguments, whose premises are derived from previous conclusions, and so on-- eventually you get to unsubstantiated beliefs. So, basically, relying on first principles requires a kind of "faith." Additionally, it's basically impossible to argue for the use of reason without committing circular reasoning-- any reason you give for the use of reason is, well, using reason (and thus assuming the truth of the conclusion in the premise). Now, I'm all for using reason, obviously, I'm just saying that at some point, you run into the "faith" issue, no matter where you go (there are obviously different kinds of "faith"). Just some food for thought :)

Stephen said...

@ Kevroy 33:

You said:
Now, I'm all for using reason, obviously, I'm just saying that at some point, you run into the "faith" issue, no matter where you go (there are obviously different kinds of "faith"). Just some food for thought :)

After chewing on that food for a while, I think it's unlikely anyone will be seriously confused by those different kinds of "faith". :-)
Steve Weeks


Steve Wells said...

kevroy33,

You say that

it's basically impossible to argue for the use of reason without committing circular reasoning.... Now, I'm all for using reason, obviously.

No, kevroy. You're not all for using reason. Obviously.

A person who uses reason to argue against using reason is anti-reason.

kevroy33 said...

@Steve Wells,

Well, probably, if that's what I was actually doing, i.e. "us[ing] reason to argue against using reason." I'm not arguing against reason, I'm pointing out that it's impossible to argue 'for' reason without begging the question. I'm basically repeating the argument offered by David Hume, just applying it to a (very slightly) different circumstance.